Research

2010 - David A Isenberg, MD, FRCP, FAMS

Professor Isenberg graduated in Medicine (MBBS) from St Bartholomew’s Hospital in 1973. Following a series of training positions in General Medicine, Rheumatology, Neurology, Psychiatry and Gastroenterology, he became a Research Fellow at University College Hospital and the Middlesex Hospital in 1979 where he undertook a period of basic research culminating into the award of an MD Thesis (in 1984), based on studies of the aethiopathogenesis of myositis. During this period, he first became interested in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus and helped to run the Lupus clinic at UCH with Dr Michael Snaith, then head of Rheumatology.

Following a year of clinical rheumatology at the Whittington Hospital in North London, he spent a further year in research at Tufts University, Boston, the new Medical Centre, where he was involved with the development and analysis of human monoclonal antibodies to DNA and subsequently phospholipids. On returning to the UK, he completed his training in rheumatology and was appointed Consultant Rheumatologist in November 1984.

During the next six years, he developed his own clinical research laboratory and was given a personal chair in rheumatology (University College London) in 1991. Appointed Academic Director of Rheumatology, he became the Arthritis Research Campaign’s Diamond Jubilee Professor of Rheumatology at UCL in London in 1996. He has been elected to Fellowships of both the Royal College of Physicians and the Academy of Medical Sciences.